Did Rice deserve the dump?

Possibly not, but at the end of the day Jaguar is just doing what's best for them and their public image.

Imagine you're watching the Tri-Nations Rugby game at home with a few friends. You're all getting a little fired up, probably with a couple of personal wages on who's team is going to win, and your team is behind by one point after giving up a staggering lead of 25points. So the game is 39 - 38 South Africa's way when Kurtley Beale stepped up to kick a penalty goal from the halfway touchline on full-time. The Wallabies win. What an awesome game. You get on twitter and rub it in the faces of everyone who said they would lose. "Suck on that faggots". 


Oops. You're an Olympic gold medalist with millions of eyes watching your every move and judging everything you say and do. Quick take it back. Too late it's already been put out there for people to react. And boy do they.

It's understandable that Miss Rice got caught up in the moment but there's nothing you can do about how sensitive people can get. Everyone reacts in a different way to things and some people just like to wait for celebrities to slip up. With Twitter so popular so many people are watching as many celebrities as they can. Celebrities should be aware of just how public their lives our and how closely scrutinised every move they make is. 


What Stephanie Rice said on Twitter is really very tame compared to the sort of response you would hear if you went to a pub after a game like that and I know very few people who would take offence to it. I don't think that the word is really regarded as such distasteful homophobic slur as is once was. Unfortunately for Miss Rice it's those few who do take offence that have the loudest voices.

Jaguars reaction to this mishap was normal. The reason companies have contracts with celebrities like Stephanie Rice is because of the public image that they represent. Once that public image is tainted the contract is void. Say if you had a contract with a phone company to provide a phone service. If for some reason the phone service was cancelled you would expect the contract to be cancelled also, or for an agreement to be reached where you are no longer in a contract for a service that you aren't getting. Well it's like that. Stephanie Rice was in the contract to represent the squeaky clean image that Jaguar wants. Since she is no longer that image Jaguar is entitled to terminate the contract if they so chose. Obviously it's not quite that simple and it would have to depend on the terms of the contract and other such things.

Personally I don't think that Jaguar needed to respond as harshly as they did. It's even possible that they will get a small amount of negative publicity from it. Hopefully it was just an attempt to be politically correct, but they do have to show that they can't allow controversial and ignorant slurs like that within their brand.

A hum drum review

Writing about Telstra would usually go againts the grain for me, as I find them just plain boring. Don't get me wrong, this isn't an exception to that, but I did find this article of some interest as it appears to be a fairly untouched media release, from what I can see. 


It appears that BigPond customers have been having some problems with their service lately, with a four day email outage, and I am sure Telstra is very sorry for this and wished to rectify any inconvenience that they have caused. *ahem*


Well Thats what the article, "Bigpond fixes email server" says anyway. As much as I really do like to think that any talented journalist would love nothing more than to spend his precious time working on an apologetic piece for Telstra and looking in depth to the minds of their sparse complaining customers, it just doesn't seem to have happened in this article.


The article just seems all too much of a cheap way for Telstra to send out the message to everyone that they really aren't that big bad money hungry company that people think they are. It goes into little detail about how much of an inconvenience the issue was for their customers, focusing on the fact that there are "only a very small amount" still affected. The article doesn't give any indication to what was causing the problems were just that they are being fixed. If that doesn't sound like Telstra then I don't know what does. The article does highlight the fact that Telstra posted on their website that "some customers may be experiencing issues accessing their accounts" and that "Technicians are treating this issue as a priority and are working on the problem." Don't forget the always popular "We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you."

This is quite a short article and could have been bulked up a little bit with a heart felt story about a businessman who missed out on all those loving emails from his children while on a big important meeting, or the secretary that didn't get the memo from the boss that she was to be flown to Paris for the weekend to attend an important meeting and missed out.


I only hope that the apologies given directly to the customers were more convincing than this. 


Just as a side note, I think I may have chosen to look closer at this article because my household has recently upgraded our broadband with Telstra and the service has been shocking, getting disconnected periodically with no cause. Maybe I'm slightly biased.

In response

When I found out that few of the diploma students were following our blogs I was naturally curious to see what their blogs were like, so I followed a few. Lets say for inspiration.

Imagine my amusement when I find the next one published had my name in it. Therese's blog spot "On My Mind"  spoke about the Mentoring that the diploma students have been kind enough to donate some of their time for.  I particularly liked the descriptions of her little protege's, Keiran, Harltley, Wendy and myself. (It's OK Hartley, I don't think you're an onion, and Wendy, I don't want to sedate you.)

Being the equal opportunist that I am, I thought that I should take the opportunity to write a out my experiences with the mentors.

 So every second Thursday we have our class interrupted by a new mentoring program with the diploma students. On our first day of this we really didn't know what to expect. It was exciting to think that we get the chance to talk to the students who have been through it all before, but then what do we talk about? Would they make us think that we are getting in over our heads?

They came into our class and I was a little worried by the fact that there was only four of them. Is the course really that bad? Then we divided into two groups. Alana and Therese took Wendy, Hartley, Keiran and me to the canteen where they told us they use to sit during their breaks.

I was happy that they were so approachable. As a result we tried to get as much out of them as possible, bombarding them with questions about the assessments that they did and what the lecturers will be expecting of us and how scared, exactly, we should be of Keith. To our dismay, they couldn't help us on the assignments that we had, and some of their classes were structured slightly differently, but we got to compare notes and find that we seemed to be getting off to a decent start.

Hearing about the crying corner didn't scare me off as much as I thought. It was good to hear stories of everyone who did have a little bit of a stress time. It made me feel better in the event that I do have a cry.

In all, now I look forward to having a chance to bounce off some ideas with people more experienced, in the course, than us.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....

What do I expect to get out of Cert IV in Public Relations? Well to be honest, a pass. I came into TAFE looking for a new path. Just a slight change in direction. A move away from hospitality. As much as I love working in the industry I don’t think it will get me all the riches I need to live the lifestyle I desire. So I thought that a good path to explore would be public relations. It takes all the personal skills that you develop in customer service industries and mixes it with a whole heap of other skills, some I have and some I am yet to learn. Out of this course I mostly just want to learn those skills needed for public relations. I would love to have them as an addition to my resume in life. If in doing this I am able to excel in this class then that is just a bonus.

I do want to go onto the diploma level. I feel as though I would be able to get so much more out of this course if I can push through the diploma course and succeed well enough to either get a job or go on to university and do a bachelor. However, if I don’t get that far I think that I will be content just getting through this semester.

It’s a hard balancing act trying to keep a 5 night a week job going strong as well as so many contact hours at school and then finding time to do studies at home. I’m glad that I have found friends so quickly who help me find time for it all. Without my Thursday study sessions I don’t know if I would have any of my work finished. I think my main challenge in this course this semester is to keep it all going long enough to pass and keep my sanity. In short I think my promise to myself for this course is to work my hardest at it and get the best result possible, and not to give up.